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Deluge, 2020
'Deluge', completed in April 2020, is inspired by the unforgettable flood story of my childhood – the Biblical flood, as recorded in the book of Genesis: if you live in or have visited London, you may also know of John Martin’s ‘Deluge’ – a huge Romantic masterpiece which hangs in the Tate Britain.
In the researching of the Flood I’ve since found that this monumental tragedy is a shared human story, a story that is found in all world cultures, from the Biblical deluge to the Greek account of the destruction of Atlantis to the Inca, Toltec and Aztec tellings of the Great Flood.
Some versions are vague whilst others are more precise, the Chinese Miatsu account even telling us the name of Noah’s wife whilst the Toltec (a Central American people who lived in modern day Mexico before the arrival of the Spaniards) account recounts the number of years it took for the people to migrate from the Middle East to what is now Mexico (104 years).
Hence, in this artwork we find the falling (and fallen) angels of old – The Nephilim - and the dark, rain-filled clouds and lightning that so many accounts recall; the torrential rains which led to the rising seas and eventual drowning of those ancient, pre-Diluvian civilisations, along with all the peoples and animals. Above all, the All-Seeing Eye of the Creator weeps at the destruction of the earth brought about by man’s unrelenting evil to man.
Finally, I’ll let you in on a little secret. The humble ammonite, found in their thousands below the cliffs, is the symbol of my hometown, Whitby, so I've put a couple in the bottom left-hand corner.